Despite facing an $18 million deficit, the San Diego City Council wants money for arts, police and homelessness.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer will use the council suggestions to craft the proposed budget he’s scheduled to unveil on April 12.

The projected deficit will make it harder for the mayor to include all of the requests, especially on arts funding.

Funding for the arts, police officer recruiting, homelessness and flood channel clearing are among San Diego City Council priorities for new spending despite the city facing a roughly $18M projected deficit in the upcoming budget year.

Other priorities included in council budget memos are stepped up enforcement of San Diego’s minimum wage law, funding implementation of the city’s ambitious climate action plan and a wide variety of infrastructure projects.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer and his staff will use the memos to help craft the proposed budget he’s scheduled to unveil April 12 for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

The projected deficit will make it harder for the mayor to include all of the requests, especially on arts funding, where he proposes to spend $10.4 million and six of nine council members want significantly more.

Last year the city faced a deficit for the first time since Faulconer was elected mayor in 2014, and it was also the first time the mayor used his line-item veto to slash funding for several council priorities.

Among suggestions for expanded homelessness programs is additional staffing for the Police Department’s psychiatric emergency response team, considered a crucial tool with so many local homeless suffering from mental illness.

Council members also want to expand a Fire Department program that identifies chronic, high-volume users of the city’s emergency medical system and works to connect them with less expensive resources that can meet their needs.

On police officer recruiting, some council members want the mayor to fund a pilot housing incentive program and an in-depth analysis of why so many officers have been leaving the department in recent years.

The city has less money to close the deficit than previously expected because of recent spending to combat the hepatitis A outbreak and December’s wildfires.

City finance officials had expected to have nearly $18 million in excess cash when the current budget year ends June 30, but they recently lowered that estimate to $12.3 million.

The council memos suggest several other ways to close the deficit, including revising upward revenue estimates from the city’s new cannabis tax and a delay in restoring the city’s pension reserve, which was wiped out by last year’s deficit.

Some also want to suspend a requirement from 2016 voter-approved Proposition H that half of all new revenue growth be spent on infrastructure. A two-thirds vote of the council to suspend that could free up more than $15 million.

During a Monday council hearing on city budget priorities, leaders of the local arts community said it would be shortsighted to cut their funding because they have a $1.1 billion economic impact on the region.

“Considering the exceptional economic impact, together with the inherent and intrinsic value, it is quite honestly baffling that arts and culture are once again being imperiled as a prime target for budget cuts,” said Peter Comiskey, executive director of the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership.

The mayor set arts spending for the coming budget year at $10.4 million in this winter’s financial outlook, which would be a cut from $14.6 million this budget year.

He proposed a similar cut in the proposed budget he unveiled last April, but council members restored nearly all of the money before a final budget was adopted in June.

Six of nine council members – the panel’s five Democrats and Republican Lorie Zapf – said in their memos the city should try to honor its commitment to arts spending under a program called Penny for the Arts.

The program, which the council approved in 2012, is a commitment to ramp up arts spending to the same percentage the arts received before years of steady cuts began after 2002.

The $10.4 million Faulconer’s budget proposes is more than the $9.8 million the city spent on arts just three years ago.

Comiskey said the money has a multiplier effect, helping many arts organizations secure private donations.

"The investment in arts and culture that is threatened, some $5 million, has an impact that outweighs the amount by many, many times," he said.

If there are cuts to arts funding, they should be based on previous allotments, he said.

"We understand there may be a need for arts and culture to take a proportionate share of the cut that is being shared by the city, but that should only be 2 percent off that $14.6 million," he said.